


Some Body's Eyes

by bachelorgirl



Category: Bones
Genre: Gen, No Spoilers, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-27
Updated: 2006-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bachelorgirl/pseuds/bachelorgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crazy people are crazy. Set one a random day in season one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Body's Eyes

"I don't know what that means." Temperance reached over for the bottle of immersion oil and flipped the lens on her microscope to 100x.

"It's a movie, a cultural allusion. Just -- never mind. Work with me here, Bones." Agent Seeley Booth was pacing a track in the floor behind Dr. Brennan's desk.

"I don't mean to interrupt--" Zack piped up from behind a pile of disassembled skeletal remains at his lab bench.

"Yes you do."

"What?"

"Mean to interrupt. You always do. But, now that you've accomplished your primary goal of completely disrupting my train of thought, what can I do for *you*?" Booth tapped his foot impatiently.

"It seems to me that you might be able to more effectively communicate your position if you chose something aimed more directly at your intended audience. For instance, if you wanted to more clearly illustrate your point, you might want to pick something analogous--."

"No, wait. I've changed my mind. Keep that fun factoid to yourself."

Zack opened his mouth to start speaking again and Booth cut him off with a hand over his mouth.

"No, I mean it." Booth poked Temperance in the shoulder with his finger. "Come on. We have to go."

"No, you have to go. For some reason you insist on dragging me with you." Temperance calmly continued sorting through her paperwork.

"Umm This is your thing, Bones."

"Umm no. This is *your* thing. As far as you've told me, there're no bones for me to examine. How exactly does this make it my thing?"

"You can't tell me that you're not interested. Not even a little bit."

From the doorway, Booth could see Jack Hodgins raise his hand enthusiastically, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet.

"What, Hodgins?"

"I'm interested."

Booth pointed to where Jack was standing. "See, Bones. _That's_ the appropriate response to 'Hey Bones, wanna come check out a creepy, old, abandoned warehouse where some of the guys found an even creepier basement with a room full of eyeballs?' Not your "I'm sorry, I have to put files of 100 year old foot soldiers into order of ascending levels of boredom."

"That was into subgroups based on the classification of cause of death, after we've previously classified them by location and date of death," Zack piped in helpfully.

Booth turned around and glared at Zack. "Shouldn't you be paying more attention Humpty Dumpty over there?"

Thankfully, Zack put his head down and resumed fiddling with the remains on the table.

"You know what the best part of your job is, Bones?"

"You letting me do my job?" Temperance continued to flip through her files.

"The fact that you love it so much that you refuse to have anything to do with the administration of the Jeffersonian. Which means, you have a boss. Ergo, you have someone who can tell you what to do and when to do it. Who I will be more than happy to ask for permission to take you with me."

"Did you just say what I think you just said?"

Booth nodded, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

"You'd tell on me?"

Booth continued to nod and grin.

"Are we five years old?"

"It's a means to an end, Bones"

"You know I hate you, right?" Temperance sighed as she pushed herself back from the desk and Booth too the opportunity to grab her by the shoulder and direct her towards the door.

"That's the spirit."

Just as they reached the door, Temperance paused and looked over her shoulder. "Hey, Zack?"

"Yes, Dr. Brennan?"

"You wanna come with?"

"Really?"

"Sure. Grab your kit. We'll meet you at the car."

Temperance turned around and grinned at Booth whose jaw was dropped open. "What was that all about?"

"The Jeffersonian is a teaching institution. He still needs to learn. And, hey, no time like the present, right?"

"You're doing this to get back at me." Booth crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"The fact that you didn't phrase that as a question implies that you know the answer."

"Just don't let him touch anything."

* ~ * ~ *

They were standing in the doorway, paused.

"So." Zack said, looking around the room. "Have you ever felt like you're being watched?"

In unison, both Temperance and Booth turned around and looked at Zack wearing matched expressions of not being amused. "What? I'm serious. This is seriously, seriously creepy." Zack took a cautious step into the room. "It's like they're following you."

"Zack. Vision is a cortical process. And, as these eyes were severed along the optic nerve and were removed from their head, they are no longer attached to their brains. Which means, they have no cortex. They can't see you. They're not watching you," was Dr. Brennan's helpful response.

"Doesn't mean it doesn't feel like they're watching you." Booth looked nervously around the room. "So, doc. What's up with this?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, turning to look at Booth, shining her flashlight directly into his eyes.

Booth held up his hands in an effort to shield his face. "Why would someone fill a room with eyeballs?"

"There's got to be at least 30 sets of them in here," Zack remarked, snapping photos of the crime scene. Booth had tried to tell him that the FBI crime scene analysts had already done that, but Zack insisted on taking his own. Booth really hoped that Zack didn't have a personal collection somewhere.

"Possibly multiple someones. And, there are a number of possible explanations. However, we need to compile a lot more information on these before we come to any conclusions."

"Bones. It's a room full of eyeballs. How much more information is there to collect?"

"Dr. Brennan, I feel as though I have to agree with Agent Booth on this."

Booth looked over at Zack, surprised to find him agreeing. But, he looked pointedly at Dr. Brennan and gestured to Zack. "See?"

"Well, Zack, we won't know until we find it. We're going to need a few jars of Bouin's solution." Dr. Brennan turned to Booth. "It's a slightly modified formalin solution that provides excellent preservation of nuclei and chromosomes. It also has a very mordanting effect on tissue which makes it excellent for staining with trichrome stains at a later date for histopathology.

Booth looked Temperance in the eye. "I'm not sure exactly why you felt that it was necessary that I know that."

She continued about the room like he hadn't even spoken. "We're also going to want to take some samples before we fix some of the tissues."

She crouched down in front of a shelf that was currently housing 6 or 8 pairs. Shining her flashlight on the eyes, she examined each one carefully.

"Or, perhaps, maybe not."

Booth nearly dropped his flashlight. "What do you mean, maybe not?"

"Did you know that pigs are remarkable similar to human beings?"

Booth sighed impatiently. "Believe it or not, I did, Bones. I do occasionally listen when you talk, you know."

"Well, it's not hard to see how your criminal investigators would have made this mistake, but it's probably going to put an entirely different spin on this case. Or, at least, it would appear that way so far."

Zack and Booth spoke in unison. "You mean these are pig's eyes?" "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Pig's eyes?" Booth turned to Zack.

"At first examination, these eyes appear remarkably similar to the eyes of a human being. I can easily see how they could be mistaken as such. It took me a while to realize what I was looking at, myself. If these eyes had been found in the vicinity of the body of a human being missing eyes, I may have been fooled for a lot longer, if not indefinitely. And, perhaps it's simply a matter of the number of eyes that we find here. This time, it's this eye right here that gives it away." Temperance pointed to a particular eyeball that didn't appear to look any different than the surrounding ones.

Zack looked genuinely confused and knelt down next to Dr. Brennan. "What are you seeing?"

"If you look here, everything about this eye looks remarkably human. However, the other eye from the pair," she reached over and re-positioned the other eye slightly. "This small piece of attached membrane is found in a large number of mammalian species, but is not found in homo sapiens. At least not in this recognizable form."

"Nictitating membrane." Zack spoke with such certainty that it was clear that both of the scientists in the room now had a clear understanding of the situation.

"Huh? Wanna translate that into human?"

"Third eyelid," Zack and Temperance looked at him and replied simultaneously.

"Of course," Dr. Brennan continued thoughtfully. "It's essential that we examine each of these sets thoroughly and individually. Zack, why don't you go grab the rest of the supplies from the truck?" Zack nodded, looking quizzically at Dr. Brennan.

"Just because the first few sets are porcine, doesn't mean the rest of them are. I mean, it's entirely possible that there's a set belonging to a human being in here somewhere. It's probably a really great way to hide something. You know, right out in the open. It's fascinating, really."

"You know," Booth began, dialing his boss. "It's rather frightening to me that this was easier to understand when we thought it was a room full of human eyeballs. Now that we know it's a room full of pig's eyes, I have no idea what to think."

"Join the club."

Waiting for his boss to answer, Booth continued. "Actually, I do know what I think. I think that I wish that strange little assistant of yours could drive so we could send him out for coffee."

Temperance gave him _a look_.

" _After_ he was done learning, of course," Booth continued. "This is going to be a seriously long night."

Temperance stood up, brushed some of the dust off of her pants and shone her flashlight around the room, surveying the large number of specimens left to collect and examine. "You're telling me."


End file.
